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by Toloache » Mon Jul 21, 2014 9:02 am
If the track you like sounds good, it probably means there are way more subs in your synth kick that makes the room rattle.
Various ways to solve/reduce the problem:
If you synthesize:
1) start synthesizing the kick at a higher frequency. Use from G# to C and you should be off to a good start.
2) If you use the classic way of starting from a sine, maybe you can add harmonics to make it reproduce in a better way on small systems. Throw it through a saturator or your favorite distortion unit, adjust to taste.
If you use samples:
1) throw them in a spectrum analyzer and watch for peaks under 30hz. If there are peaks eq, or even better change kick. If a sample is designed to work at D or E in many cases it will sound sh!t if you remove the low frequencies. If you eq don't use an hp on the kick. Notch out the peaks or use a tight low shelf. In general, they sound better if you don't hp them.
2) Put smexoscope in the kick track and watch your waveform. Open the kick you like and watch its waveform. Now use compression, eq, saturation to make the shape similar in your kick (better to start off with a kick that sound already similar). In general: medium attack slow release for more punch/snap and less tail. Fast attack medium/fast release for bigger tails and bass kicks.
3) Watch out for peaks that accours at the same time with the kick, for example snares or percussion that hits at the same time. They could cause a big overlapping transient that eat your headroom and make your sistem distort. In general i have first and third kick of a bar hit full force, and second and fourth with a little bit less velocity and equed to work with the snare/clap/wathever you put over it. You can also nudge the overlapping sample a little bit forward or backward or play with it's attack time. Pay attention to overall level and how the transient behave in smexoscope (on your master channel or drum subgroup) when you do this.
4) Watch out for dissonances caused by an off key underneath bass.
5) Fast offbeat kick hits can cause unwanted level fluctuations if you don't put them in a choke group and/or reduce the number of voices in your sampler (ableton sampler for example default at 4. What happens is that the end of the offbeat kick overlap with the onbeat kick transient. Change it to 1).
General:
1) If you have the money, treat your room.
2) If you don't have the money, at minimum you should invest in a good pair of headphones to check bass, and then you can use the monitors to check pan and other things.
3) don't limit yourself to techno sample packs! A lot of the heavier techno kicks i have comes from deep house samples packs or old drum machines.. so don't let a sample pack name mislead you. When you acquire a new one, listen to it, dissect it, and categorize it according to your method of production and workflow. You will get a lot of more use out of it this way.
In the end it seems difficult , but it all really comes down to find a kick sample you like and mixing the song around it.
Hope this helps!
